The basic “calories in” metric would be good but far more useful would be the “carbs/fat/protein” breakdown- I find that can have a measurable influence on sleep / the next day, etc.

Would it be possible to use the runkeeper API as a workaround until direct access is possible?

@cgnguyen When we add nutrition data we’ll include Runkeeper as a source, so if you’re syncing your MyFitnessPal data to your Runkeeper account you’ll be able to use that to get your nutrition data into Exist.

@bellebethcooper Validic is a integration provider, and they (will) support Myfitnesspal, and thus it is accessible via their API. https://support.validic.com/customer/en/portal/articles/2231359-myfitnesspal-integration-details

@jvdalen We’ve talked to Validic and a couple of other teams working on similar services, but that path isn’t one we’re willing to go down for now. Two main reasons: generally, the costs are far too prohibitive for a tiny company like ours, and also we’re not comfortable relying on a proprietary API for something that’s so core to our business. We’d rather connect directly to the APIs of services we integrate with (and deal with the developers of those services directly, too).

Email MFP! http://myfitnesspal.desk.com/customer/portal/emails/new

Email sent! :)

Email sent as well. I also mentioned that what I would like to be tracked between Exist and MFP are premium features, such as macronutrients (Am I in a more sour mood when I eat less sugar and gain weight??? I THINK SO!!! I DEMAND CUPCAKES!)

email sent ;) if you are premium user like myself, threaten them to not renew the subscription.

From their email: “[…] Thank you for contacting our Premium Support, my name is Artie and I’d be more than happy to address your concerns!

Currently our API is private so Exist.io will need to be approved by our developers. We are definitely considering to have an open API in the future but we are not sure when this will be. For now, can you have Exist.io submit a request to join our API? To do so, they will need to fill out our API web form at http://www.myfitnesspal.com/api and we’ll get information to them about access as soon as we can. […]”

@alessandroferrari4 thanks Alessandro. Needless to say, we’ve already applied via that form two or three times now. without response.

@joshsharp can I screenshot this and send it to them?

@alessandroferrari4 haha if you like!

This is the new answer: “Thanks for the followup and apologies that Exist.io has not received a response yet. It is possible we have received many requests which is causing a delay but I will forward this to our integrations team in hopes we can reach out to Exist.io soon. We appreciate your help as we work to improve our program! “

w/o investigation MFP was acquired by Under Armour Feb/15 now UACF. UA Record App is the Centerpiece of the UA Apps Under Armour Connected Fitness Platform https://developer.underarmour.com/

I suspect that UACF is retiring the MFP API in favor of the UNCF Platform. - supporting my theory is the ‘pricing’ plans * note: previously, MFP did not send 3rd party data to Record e.x. if I used my Aria Body Scale to send send data to MFP, MFP would not pass that data to Record

3rd Party Alternative There are a few 3rd party fitness data platforms: www.healthgraph.com www.humanapi.co www.validic.com + a few purpose-build ones that add social, game, etc. Google Fit: developer.goog.com/fit HealthKit: developer.apple.com/healthkit/

CONS - UX is a little clunky as you need to pass request through the 3rd party - apps can choose what data is shared e.x. jawbone pulls data but does not push any

PRO HealthGraph has 150+ integrations, which would allow exist to quickly access data from many sources.

JM

I hope the irony that the UACF Platform uses the MFP’s oAuth credentials @ Mashery for Login

Thanks for all those details Jonathan. We’ve previously decided not to use those third-party aggregators. I’ve looked at the UA Record API but unfortunately no food data from there so far.

Also, we already support food via Apple Health, and there’s a suggestion on here for food tracking via Google Fit.

I see this has been moved to not possible - but looks like MFP is accepting requests for the API.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/api

Is there a way to re-open? Maybe we can re-submite requests as a user? I completed this form and fudged in my response by ticking “personal” and explained I was a user and made my request to share with Exist. I also submitted a second request from the user help portal “contact us” form.
Have you tried to submit to here? Looks like you may stand a chance. I focused it in my messages as a 3-way win - user - gets to share their data - motto should be “it’s my data and i’ll share if I want to!” MFP - will likely get more subscribers or premium upgrades b/c if the data can be used people will use it more. no threat as exist doesn’t replace need for MFP, in fact it increases my motivation to use it Exist - gets a new partner to integrate key data

I would like to integrate more than nutrition, also Would like to add the user defined measurement section as well (sectino in MFP htat let’s me track anything I define e.g. body fat %, water %, inches etc)

“R M”, the form you linked to is the same one we’ve tried repeatedly in the past and still says “The MyFitnessPal API is currently a private API available to approved developers only.” We even had an inside contact who told us we wouldn’t get access, so until it’s open to everyone, I doubt this situation will change.

Alternative solution is to connect myfitnesspal to fitbit. Nutrition data will sync to exist via fitbit service. Possibly the same for strava or runkeeper, but I don’t have these to verify.

The only downside is Fitbit doesn’t sync all nutrition attributes. I think things like sugar and sodium are missing.

Is something like this any use?

https://github.com/coddingtonbear/python-myfitnesspal

Unfortunately that library requires access to the user’s MyFitnessPal password, which isn’t an approach we’re comfortable with. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

No problem, thanks for looking into it!

For iOS users, doesn’t MyFitnessPal → Apple Health → Exist work?

or even via Fitbit, which can integrate with MFP

I often had issues with MyFitnessPal saving duplicates of data in Apple Health every time I updated an entry

Yes, I think these are both options, which make it less necessary to integrate directly.

Syncing it to Apple health first is totally doable. Time of meals somehow would also be nice (I.e. skipping a meal or reading right before bed), but that’s not captured by apple health :/

Update: requested access again a few weeks ago, no response. They’re really set on not giving out access 😕

Samsung health actually pulls data from here if I understand correctly.

Health sync is useful, though I would love to see a breakdown of what I eat and how it affects me, even if it has similar sugar/carbs etc.

Plus, the entries on MFP aren’t always accurate in terms of those macros.

I would love for exist.io to just tell me “you have a better mood on days when you add tomatoes to your breakfast” or “you sleep less on days when you eat cookies” or something.

Sorry to hear MFP hasn’t granted their request after all these years…

We’ve pretty much given up hope on MyFitnessPal after all our previous requests for API access went unanswered, but for good measure I submitted another one today, just in case.

Is this helpful? https://github.com/marcosav/myfitnesspal-api#readme

Thanks Rachel, but sadly not. Because it’s unofficial, it requires your MFP password, which we never want access to.